Injury sucks

Injury sucks! They stop us from achieving our long term and short-term goals and at times, depending on severity, can completely disable our ability to do anything. Severe or mild, they often stress us out due to this inability to progress and / or move as desired. On top of that there is the crippling pain or annoying niggle that stresses us out even more. Well, they do me so I re-iterate; injury sucks…big time.

Injury is a stress…in many ways

That’s the rant over, now what can I do personally to ensure the impact is as little as possible and recovery is as swift as possible?! Well, I have recently had some niggles, some annoying and some pretty high impacting injuries. Regardless what they were, they all played some part to change how I go about my training and my daily routine. Repairing them is actually the easy part, or rather the easy to follow part: listen to the doctor/physio, treat at home with proven treatments (massage, ice / heat treatment etc…) and keep food & drink healthy to help the body promote repair.

As identified though injuries come with stress, and I have found a few things that help me keep focused and stress free. First and foremost, beyond all else, is I kept exercising. At my worst I was housebound for a while and struggled to sit up let alone move around the house. Any form of exercise seemed out of reach but that was short-sighted and the internet, here to the rescue again, had plenty of ideas to help.

Do something!

Using the mentality of yoga to focus on what we can do and to respect what we can’t, Kino Yoga review this with Healing injuries with yoga article, I sought out what was in my ability. When it was a niggle I used yoga to strengthen, something more then yoga helped free up the area of concern and at my worst yoga gave me something to do, even if it was some neck and wrist movements. It provided structure and helped develop patience and focus; a bonus quality of the practice.

The time I had free, rather than the time I was incapable (trying positivity), got me thinking about what I am missing in my training. Mens Health’s recent article Are you breathing properly? hits the nail on the head “it’s surprising how little we think about how we breathe”. It’s back on the agenda, as well as trying out apps like BreathGuru and Calm I also did a few breathing exercises such as those recommended by Dr Weil and they do not disappoint. Breathing is important and most of us, regardless of injury, can do this. It kept me training and kept me focused.

Its not all bad

Another though to mention was to embrace the downtime. With some injuries it is a a balancing act between pain and a drug fuelled mind from pain killers and it is easy to sleep (a lot) and just wait and moan away days (I’ve done this). But I am still here, I’m frustrated because I can’t do what I want to do now…but I know I will at some point. Patience! That’s what I needed to tell myself. Watch those documentaries, contact those friends and sleep if I need to…its part of the recovery process. Point I made to myself was this is indeed a process, I’m not waiting, I’m progressing and every hour that passes is progress. I keep hydrated, keep entertained and keep a smile on my face…the latter may be the hardest part but like Elbert Hubbard said “If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.”

Re-focus

Treating the mind isn’t as straight forward as treating the body, the mind is after all way more complex. They are however very connected! It is the inability to use the body that affects the mind. We can’t do what we want and that itself is debilitating and demotivational. Doing what we can will not only help with the stress induced from injury but can also be highly enlightening and even improve our outlook and improve what we once thought was a cast iron training routine.

Being injured does suck but can give us a new perspective, it’s an opportunity to reboot and change what we do for the better as it enforces some form of downtime. Focusing on what we can do is a way of dealing with it and possibly helps us venture into new grounds.